LOOK magazine - The Dancing Merchants of Media
The Dancing Merchants of Media
By Bobby Caingles
(LOOK magazine, July 1995)
If you have ever watched a ballerina rehearsing in front of a wall-to-wall mirror, you
might be tempted to think the artist as vain and the art the vainest of all.
And if one thinks of ballet this way, then perhaps it is only right that this supremely selfconscious art form marry with the most self-indulgent industry of all—advertising.
Ballet-cum TV sensation Lisa Macuja brought notice to this phenomenon when this most
visible of ballerinas appeared in the Whisper commercial. There was something
ethereally right with the picture of Lisa endorsing this most feminine product. What is it
in the ballerina—what is it which she epitomizes—which makes her the ideal model for
certain products, not necessarily having anything to do with ballet?
Several months after that very effective commercial, we saw several other ballet
practitioners, mainly female, taking the limelight and representing their craft before
millions of television viewers all over the country via the medium of commercials.
Maritoni Rufino, the mysterious JAG girl who prances about amid those tall columns and
long archaic hallways, doing free-style ballet, showing the flexibility of her jeans, and the
lyrical gracefulness of this ballerina in the process—gave one the subliminal message that
JAG gives one perfect freedom of movement. This could not have been delivered in a
more eloquent way.
How did this Philippine Ballet Theatre soloist get in to the advertising scene?
“We had a show and one of the makeup artists was from Cosmopolitan Ad Agency. She
made me fill out this form just in case they’ll have a project that’s right for me,” Maritoni,
beautiful, confident, and shy, all at once, says.
The agency called one day and auditioned Maritoni along with so many other dancers.
“They wanted us to dance free-style. . . . they’d just put on the music for you and. . . . you
dance,” she relates. Needless to say, Maritoni showed them that she what they needed to
deliver the punch line of the commercial’s concept.
With that unconventional jeans advertisement, Maritoni got the attention not only of
television viewers nationwide but unexpectedly, of her colleagues in her profession as
well. “It (appearing in commercials) does help with the publicity. After the JAG ad,
people were, like, more aware of me as a dancer,” she says.
Cathereen Lee, meanwhile, all of 21 years old and taking up MassCom at Miriam
College, is one of the two perfect bodies that we see in perfect lyrical motion n the
Carnation Non-Fat Milk commercial.
“One time, McCann Erickson came to our studio and said they needed someone for the
part. I didn’t think that I was going to get the part because they were choosing the girl for
the ‘body.’ Basta nagpa-cute lang ako,e. When they asked me ‘What’s your name?’ I
said ‘Cathy!’ and flashed a great smile,” the Chinese-looking beauty says. Cathy also
did a Comelec MTV under director Jun Urbano. “That one was during my practicum in
MassCom. The producer just came up to me and asked me if I wanted in, and I said yes,”
she adds.
What it did for Cathy was, more than anything, strengthen her desire to be a part of the
industry-—not as a model—but as a creator of commercials. “I’m happy dancing. . . .
but you really don’t know what’s going to happen to you—like if you have an accident.”
Cathy wishes things were more ‘secure’ for professional ballet dancers who, in the local
setup, are not covered by accident insurance unlike dancers abroad. “At least, pag may
nangyari, I have a fallback,” she concludes.
Fragile Katrina Santos, meanwhile, appears in Camella-Palmera Homes’ big production
number involving a cast of one hundred and sixty individuals. “I appeared as a ballet
dancer there. The concept was—you had people from all walks of life, pinagsama-sama.
. . and we composed the house,” says Katrina.
“For the love of ballet,” is an expression one hears often enough in these circles. Unable
to practice what they had trained for in college (some of them with degrees, and even
licenses, in accounting and engineering) because of the jealous devotion demanded by
their craft, ballet artists who are drawn inside the world of advertising find themselves
being thankful for the experience, if only for the added income it gives them.
“Every time I do a commercial, I say—I’ll never do one again. For me, when I go
through all sorts of things in professional ballet, it’s okay because it’s for my art. But
when you do commercials and you have to do all this waiting, I just can’t stand that—all
that wasted time,” Maritoni confesses.
For the ballerina, who eats and lives and breathes for ballet, her reasons for stepping into
commercials is pretty predictable. “Ballet has the connotation that it’s for the elite,”
says Maritoni. “I feel good when I do commercials because it widens my audience. . . it
reaches more people since it’s on TV,” the comely ballerina says.
But whatever the reasons, the pleasure is all ours, actually, as we, the public-at-large, get
a chance to see the artwork of these body artists and whet our appetites for the nobler art
forms of self-expression such as ballet.